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| Found at: http://www.derekleman.com/musings/ |
The first three steps are taken in the natural light of day.
Step One: We simply come into the courtyard with a hope that something can be
done about us. Step Two: We are shocked into reality as we stand before the
altar of sacrifice realizing our sin has caused the death of Innocence. Step
Three: We are cleansed at the laver where the crushing weight of guilt is
washed away by love we have found in the sacrifice. Love trumps shame.
The next three steps are taken under the illumination of the
Spirit. Step Four: We enter a new dimension of the soul as our whole paradigm
shifts in the light of the Spirit’s candlesticks. Step Five: We spend a
lifetime deconstructing our old attitudes and actions and reassembling them
according to the new logic that follows from this new vision of reality. It is
a steady process of digesting truth and sharing in the community of the saints
at the table of shewbread. Step Six: We intercede for all people with
confidence at the altar of incense. In this Holy Place our eyes have been
opened, our minds and hearts enlivened, and our desires pointed towards the One
who wants ultimate good for us all.
The final step is yet to be and will be taken in the direct
light of God’s presence. Step Seven: We become one with the One who has held
our attention and been our inspiration and desire. The ark of His covenant with
people contains the engine of salvation, the perfection of His unalterable Law
and the paradox of His compassion. On the day of atonement have been restored without
compromising the harmony of heaven, nor the safety of the unfallen.
So here’s the longer tour…
In our clean and colorful Sabbath best, we can sing and
celebrate the Lord’s great love. We may thrill to the psalm, “Enter his gates
with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.” But when we mentally step out of
our tidy church for a moment and take another look at Psalm 100:4 it is a bit
baffling. How can we enter a place of killing with thanksgiving and praise? The
temple courtyard was a butcher yard and the stench of searing flesh must have
stung the nostrils, hardly the place for a birthday party or a wedding. Yet
there is a way that it could be entered with thanksgiving and even praise. In
fact, without the horrid stench and all that follows, our praise of God remains
powerless to see us through even one day.
Step One: Coming. Viewed from the lofty goals we sometimes
hold, our life is pretty shabby. Viewed from the ideal, it is a wreck. When we
realize that God created us for the ideal and that we were formed in beauty and
power, then our current condition is miserable. In last week’s allegory, the
man enters the E.R. in just such a state, pitiful misery, helplessness, and
hopelessness. Once there, he can relax into the care of the physicians, hence
he is able to surrender his bravado and weep in unbridled remorse and fear and
hope. His pain is real, but his confidence in the doctors and all their
equipment allows him to give up his self-care into bigger hands. There is a
thrill of hope as one enters an E.R. This is where the action is. It’s where
heroic efforts are made. It’s always open; we just have to come.
So the first
step towards wholeness is simply “coming.” We come in sorrow and expectancy. We
come daring to believe that there may be a cure for us. We come realizing there
is really nothing we can do to help out. It’s up to the Bigger Hands. The
thanksgiving for such a place, the praise for such a God is more profound,
intense, even desperate than the happy way we often sing it in church. It is
the thanksgiving of stinging tears of relief; the praise of an “Oh! I hope so!”
heart.
Step Two: Giving up. Immediately in the courtyard of the
sanctuary we are confronted by a huge altar. It is horrible. Innocent lives are
being taken, because of our failings. It is an intensely rock-bottom experience
to understand that our sins, acknowledged or hidden, are continuing to cost the
innocent ones. They trip up our own feet, but they also put stumbling stones in
the paths of others. Even God’s beautiful intent in creating us is mocked
because of our silly and self-promoting self-will and the wreckage it creates.
At the altar we see how shallow our pride and defiance are; how
counter-productive our resistance to the voice of correction. How tenacious and
fear-filled our self-protective strategies are! In the flickering light of
searing flesh we see that the only Perfect One laid down His life to cover our
huge debt to the society of heaven, and even to the ones who have depended on
us here on earth. He willingly gave up all that was good in order to cover the
waste we have made of our life. In the magnificence of His perfection, our own
efforts to do good look measly and self-centered. The altar is a tipping point.
It calls for a sharp decision. We can feel forced by the whole contraption and
turn away denying that our “little mistakes” are such a huge a problem for a
perfect heaven. We can be repulsed by the whole heavy seriousness of it all and
go back to our fractured life for a few more years, or we can be totally broken
and begin to heal.
When we accept Christ’s incomprehensible trade of His
perfection for our sin, then an entirely new path opens to us. The natural laws
of human psychology are cracked. Like a tender plant splitting concrete, God’s
love and our hope in it, break our heart. Our pride and defensiveness are
shattered. The stony heart that would have kept us locked in self-perpetuating
limitations and failures is now broken. It has been blown open and in those
painful gaps there is room for the seeds of a limitless life that transcends
the natural cycle of life and death on this planet. This most horrible altar,
this most wrenching of surrenders are the doorway to profound hope and
belonging. This is the second step towards wholeness, giving up on the thought
that we can bandage ourself. It is the step of trusting our care to the Doctor
despite His incomprehensible ways. Step two is surrendering our little fortress
of self-protective sticks and stones and daring to believe that the Universal
Superpower has our back. The amazing heart that was laid on that altar is our
guarantee that the unsearchable One has an unfathomable desire for us.
The blood of the
altar is not left at the altar. Like
a key it unlocks each of the next steps; it is just that monumental. Without our
running smack into the reality of the hot stones and flaming death of the altar
we cannot grasp any of the next steps. Only after the eyes of the Jewish
zealot, Saul, were blinded by the divine presence of Christ could he emerge as
Paul to see a whole new Christian world. Only in the conscious shadow of the astounding
sacrifice do we have the audacity to take any of the next steps. Without it we
do not have the clarity to see a road ahead. So, turning from the altar, but
always with its memory, we walk to the laver, that bowl of cleansing water.
Step Three: Dropping the doo doo. The mirror-surfaces of the
laver show you that we have some “washing off” to do. The altar has removed the
stench of death from our future, but the laver provides the laundering of our
soul. The grime of guilt and the shabbiness of shame have to be washed away.
The Love that drove the burning sacrifice now stoops to gently rinse away the
tears of self-pity and self-loathing. Our gratitude and love for Jesus drive
home the point that it is us that He
loves that deeply. How can we, then, continue to criticize and abuse the object
of His love? The altar shone an oppressive spotlight on our failing, self-clutching
condition and laid it next to His unfathomable and self-offering love. Now the
laver refreshes our soul with a new sense of worth. Our flaws are still there, we’ve
created habits and consequences that will continue to vex us, but at the laver our
despair, our guilt, and our shame are washed away. These anxieties would keep us
from fully engaging in what lies ahead.
But can’t we just come into the courtyard and close our eyes
and scurry around the altar to bathe in the refreshing and soothing laver? Some
religions and secular psychology try to accomplish this. However, without
understanding the burning struggle of self-sacrificial love we cannot stay
fully present to all the work needed in our life and simultaneously hold the
joyous hope of His support at every step. Some religions tell us to release any
sorrow for sin and any longing for a better situation. The power is in the
“now.” Just be, and release all
regret and all desire. We will reach something
better by not desiring what is
better.
Secular psychology, on the other hand, examines how we got
to this place and what it means to be human without a hope of heaven. We are
not responsible for this mess. Our genetics, and the concepts we’ve constructed
out of very human, very natural, situations all make sense. We have done the
best that anyone in our precise situation would have done. Now, what baby steps
would we like to take towards a more desirable place?
So we can pick our poison. We can deny the glories we once
hoped were possible, or we can deny the seriousness of our disappointing
performance. Both offer some relief, but neither allows for the clarity and
honesty of how horrible we can be and how glorious we could be. The laver does
both, because of the altar. The laver
can’t work without the sacrifice. The altar shows the huge gulf between the
condition of our heart and life and those of the Savior. The pain of that gulf
can only be handled under the banner of His love. So the laver takes that
Savior’s love and wraps us in it.[1] Our
guilt and shame pale in the sight of His affection. It’s like we have emerged
from the sauna and are now cleansed and moving towel-clad towards the
restorative massage.
Before moving to Step Four, let’s take a break to back up
and see the sanctuary in a broader scope. When we entered the courtyard we were
under the light of the sun. All is natural, even physical and external, there. We
came to with a hope we could be fixed.
We saw the reality of our situation
and of God’s desire for us. And God conquered
our voice of self-accusation. Of course, God was always inviting us to come.
God made our situation painfully clear and convinced us of His grace towards us
through the crucifixion. And God led us through the baptism where we declared our
love for Him and accepted His estimate of our worth.
Clutching the twin realities of our continued failure and
His continued grace, and being warmed to the covering of His mercy, we are
ready to join Him in some honest labor. It is time to enter the inner work that
He wants to accomplish in us. It is time to leave the natural light of the sun
and move into the candle light of the Spirit. It is time to enter the Holy
Place.
Step Four: Seeing through new eyes. When we step into the
Holy Place our eyes must adjust to the softer light. The glare of natural world
is left outside as we enter the dancing, living light of a whole new worldview.
The candlesticks to our left invite us to see differently. We behold the beauty
of the embroideries that are hidden to the outside world. This is our soul the
way He designed it. We are capable of so much more than we thought, because we
were made in His image. Before the humbling work of the altar, we would not have
appreciated the delicate beauty of this sacred place. Before the cleansing work
of the laver we would not have counted ourself worthy to dream this could be ours.
Now in this gentle candlelight the entire world is redecorated. We are
beginning to see through His eyes.
Step Five: Digesting the truth. In this new light, we have
some rethinking to do. We have accepted that life can contain indescribable
beauty, and we believe that He is offering this to us as our birthright.
However, we have years of thought habits to undo. There are jokes that are
repugnant in this place, but they still amuse us. There are schemes we feel are
essential to getting ahead in life, but they are strangely out of place here.
In the terms of neuroscience, we have many neurological
pathways to prune and many neuro-networks to establish. That will require “attention
density;” repeated focus and practice over time. In the language of religion, we
need to commence the Christian walk, keeping the abiding Word of Christ ever in
our heart. In the concepts of philosophy, we have adopted a new premise. Now we
have to develop the resulting logic.
This all happens at the table of showbread. With new vision
illuminating our minds we read the Bible as a new book. Seeing through the eyes
of Jesus, we come to understand God differently. We read the same old stories
but feel a different Heart in them. Passage after passage tumbles into place as
we meditate on them and ask for the Spirit’s illumination. Our rational teeth
are breaking the nutrients of each saying and lining them up with the
relational Truth we have already experienced. This is the work of a lifetime;
dismantling misconceptions, breaking down habits, building new understandings
and habits, and deepening the conviction that nothing will separate us from the
love of God. It’s wild and wonderful work and as the beauty of a whole new
logic arises, the pain of our own shortcomings at times threatens to make us
leave the project. But the memory of the sacrifice, the comfort of the
cleansing, and illumination of the Spirit all encourage us to continue. What
scientist has not felt humbled even intimidated by his or her explorations?
As this work of building a new logic, a new lifestyle, upon
His worldview continues, we automatically sense community with other pilgrims
who are also converging on this sacred place. The 12 loafs on this table are
not just the truth we are learning to intellectually digest, they are the truth
we are learning to physically live. Community happens as we share that quest
with the people of other personality “tribes” in a spirit of forgiveness and
becoming.
Step Six: Intercession. There is no better word for it. We
work for the betterment of others, but not in the spirit of strident advocacy.
There is a Father in heaven that we trust. We know He wants to bless, so we
ask; we don’t need to demand. At the table of bread we come into truth and community.
At the altar of incense we ask boldly for the gifts our studies have led us to
expect. These are not the gifts of short-term fixes or cheap thrills. We ask
for things that will work for the salvation of others and ourselves, even when
we don’t understand precisely what is needed. We are finally connecting with
God in the way that aligns us with His purposes. It’s the only sustainable way
to pray. Essentially we are asking Him to join us at the table He has already
prepared for us. And in so doing we stand facing the seventh and final step.
Step Seven: The beauty of holiness, the wonder of atonement.
A curtain still separates us from the Most Holy place which is illuminated by
the very presence of God. Metaphorically it is the depths of our spirit, a place
where God silently companions us in a way that the world cannot touch. It is
sacred place unreachable by any other hands. It contains the great engine of
salvation. We are nearing “ground zero” in the righteousness of God. Only one
piece of furniture occupies this hallowed space. It is the ark of the covenant
between God and people. Even here God is not visible except in the light that
emanates from the seat of His mercy above the ark. The ark affirms the power of
the vision of what should be. In the presence of perfection, roughly written
for people as the Ten Commandments, our efforts at righteousness would be
totally blown away. But the presence of mercy hovering above the Law reassures us that, yes, even this perfection is our
destiny. The power of the gospel story is that we have been saved without
cheapening heaven. The ideal remains. We have not reached it, but the journey
is glorious and stimulating. We travel safely enshrouded in the folds of His
majestic robe of favor. He will continue to show us honestly where we are, and
to encourage us with visions of where we are headed. He will show us the next
step, and He will continue to accompany us as we near that Day of Atonement where
faith will finally be sight.
That’s it. The psychology of salvation: 1) We come from our days
of scurrying around outside the courtyard in our own self-protective hedgehog
ways into a place of hope. 2) We honestly face our deplorable condition and discover
His matchless love. 3) His love frees us from the paralysis of fear and regret.
4) We adopt a whole new set of eyes, His way of seeing life. 5) We careful
digest truth and develop a sense of solidarity with His other children. 6) We
begin to pray in the mind of Christ. 7) We steadily progress towards the time
of atonement. We grow in the beauty of holiness as we ponder the creative
tension between the perfection of His Law and the ascendancy of His love.
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we
shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)
[1]
Remember the hymn “There Is a Fountain.”
“And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain.”
This was bewildering and repulsive to me as a child. Now at the laver it is glorious.
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